[OSM-talk] OTG rule, borders & mountains existing | Re: Crimea situation - on the ground

[stevea]

On Feb 8, 2020, at 2:58 AM, Rory McCann <rory at technomancy.org> wrote:
> On 07.02.20 20:12, stevea wrote:
>> A well-known example is (national, other) boundaries, which
>> frequently do not exist "on the ground,"
> National borders don't exist on the ground? huh? Have you ever actually
> _crossed_ an international border? I assure you they exist on the
> ground. From large infrastructure, to changes in the paint colour on
> roads, one can nearly always *see* where a border is.

I didn't say "always" (I said "frequently," though I was being parochial / local to me).  Between USA and Canada, for thousands (and thousands) of kilometers, the national border is entirely invisible.  True, in places, it exists in an observable way (some stone markers, border crossings with paint-on-asphalt, even a fence or wall here or there), but I'd even say "mostly," the USA-Canada national border simply "isn't there:"  nothing on-the-ground, that is.  We (OSM) cannot say that "nearly always" characterizes how one can *see* where a border is.  And yes, I have crossed international borders, dozens, maybe hundreds of times.

By contrast (thanks for the link and photo, Minh), our wiki https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Boundaries#National_boundary shows the stark demarcation between San Diego (California, USA) and Tijuana (Baja California, México), Having frequently crossed it, I know this boundary well and it is an example of an OBSERVABLE boundary OTG.  But again, not all are.  Nor are MANY things in OSM "observable OTG" like this, yet they remain in the map (and more are added each day).  OSM should explicitly acknowledge this.

>> Other examples include large bodies of water and mountain ranges.
>> I've lived on the Pacific coast most of my life and been to dozens of
>> beaches, but never once on any beach have I seen a sign which reads
>> "Pacific Ocean."  Same with no signs at the edge of or in the middle
>> of "Rocky Mountains" or "The Alps."  (I've been, and I haven't seen).
>> Yet, OSM maps oceans and mountain ranges.  How do we know their names
>> without anything on the ground?
> We ask people there. We look at books, at maps, at whether there is a detailed Wikipedia article on the topic, do are travel books published that refer to this area as that, do organisations that cover that area use that term. We look to see if the name is _used in reality_.
> 
> That's the "on the ground rule". IMO "on the ground" refers to "observable reality".

See, "the on the ground rule," to the best of my ability to determine it (an exception is your opinion as you explicitly express here, and that's part of the problem with it), isn't clearly defined and it needs the elasticity of such ad hoc exceptions.  It doesn't say (explicitly, anywhere, except in your exception) "we ask people there and look at books, other maps, Wikipedia, travel books, organizations...if the name is used in reality."  You do (here, as an "exception," by way of clarifying your understanding of OTG) but if all of that is true, OSM should say so:  formally and as fully as possible.

Such fuzzy semantics land us where we are:  in ambiguity.  Let us acknowledge that such exceptions (and there are many of them) exist and best deserve to be explicitly described.  We should do so for the betterment of the rule.  And, "rule" becomes "good guideline, applicable where it can be easily and unambiguously applied, but with sensible exceptions we can largely but probably not exhaustively delineate."

With such dialog, we get closer, yes.

SteveA